


two ways to skin tonight

by ilgaksu



Series: the greatest [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Olympics, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Coming Out, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 04:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8734102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: “You can do this,” Keith’s coach tells him at seventeen, hand on his shoulder and nerves in his eyes. Keith looks down at the chalk against his hands, stark and messy against the black of the gloves. He adjusts one of the straps again. Flexes his hand. Nods.





	

**2009**

 

The sun is high in Varadero. At twelve-going-on-thirteen, Lance walks home from a sleepover. His backpack tugs at his shoulders with the weight of itself, and he’s already bought a second can of soda. He ducks into the ice-cool foyer, the air-conditioning churning overtime, and turns his best grin onto the receptionist as he ducks into the changing rooms. Dropping his bag is a relief: he read the other day that some athletes put rocks in their bags for training, but he’s decided he’s going to put them all back on his way home. There’s got to be some easier way to do the whole muscle thing, but he’s trying the best he can with what he’s got: which is running on the beach, back and forth, whilst his sister calls out times on a stopwatch; which is offering to carry all the groceries, all of them, _it’s fine, Mama, I want to_ ; which is wrestling Alex into the carpet every chance he gets. 

He chews on his lip absently as he heads out to the pool, his lungs filling with the smell of chlorine, twisting the strap of his goggles round and round his wrist until the skin whitens so he stops. 

“Hey, you’re back again,” the newest lifeguard says, sounding surprised, when Lance passes. “That’s twice this week already.” 

Lance was here on Thursday too, but before he can correct him Nina appears. 

“Hey, Lance,” Nina says, smiling warm and familiar. She’s growing out her hair and it keeps getting in her eyes. “You ready to go?” 

“Uh-huh,” Lance replies, rocking back on his heels a little, impatient. Maybe he should keep the rocks. Mama says he needs to give himself time, that he’ll get there, but there’s regionals next week and Lance has woken up the last three mornings with a kind of electric itch under his skin, one that sings:  _ faster, faster, now.  _

“Great,” she says, and gets out her own stopwatch. Lance loses a whole three seconds eyeing it jealously, before remembering why he’s there. Time, time, he hasn’t got enough time. “Let’s do this.” 

 

**2007**

 

“Have you thought about joining any of the after school clubs here, Keith?” his gym teacher asks him when she sees him waiting at the bus stop again. Keith, eight years old and licking sugar from his hands, shrugs. “I saw you doing cartwheels at recess. You’re good at it. You’d like the gym club, I think.”

“Nah,” he says. 

“You should,” she replies. Her car keys jingle in her hands. Keith’s eyes track them. She has a dark green second-hand Lexus, which isn’t anything special, but it’s a damn sight more than Keith’s got. Driving tests, though, and the possibility of having them, let alone passing them, are in the realm of the imaginary right now; no more real than Santa or parents. Keith isn’t stupid.   

“My bus stops running after five thirty,” he tells her. He remembers to look back at her face, because last week one of his new teachers shouted at him for not looking him in the eyes. He’d told him  _ you don’t have to pick on me just because you’re bigger. It’s not fair if you know you’ll win already,  _ and been promptly sent to the principal’s office.  

“I thought you got the blue bus home,” she says carefully. The blue bus is the one the other care kids get. Keith was fostered again two months ago, so he doesn’t have to get it anymore. When he tells her this, she nods. 

“You know,” she tries again, “It might be a good way to make friends, Keith.”

Keith pulls a face. 

“Think about it,” she offers, then: “After all, we’re getting trampolines next month.”

“Oh,” Keith says. “Oh. Really?” 

 

**2015**

 

Lance turns eighteen at midnight. It’s an old family story; his mother going into labour in the back of the car, his father fishtailing it into the hospital carpark with ten minutes on the clock before Lance took his first breath. Eight hours later, he staggers out onto the balcony of their apartment to breathe. Tahlia is already stood there, fully made-up for her shift and inhaling a last cigarette. 

“Those are bad for you,” he says, squinting at the sunlight, eventually giving up and covering his eyes as he sinks into one of the shitty plastic garden chairs they never got around to replacing. His head is wailing. Somehow. He doesn’t know how. He bravely doesn’t join in. 

“Not as bad as your face,” she says mildly, and stubs it out against the railing.  “You were home late.”

“Nope,” he groans, dry-swallowing some aspirin. They get stuck halfway down and he gags. Tahlia hands him her half-empty glass of orange juice and he drains it gratefully. “Nope, you’re just awake too early.”

“Uh-huh,” she murmurs, clearly amused. “Good night? Bad head?”

“Worth it,” he manages, through gritted teeth. “Totally worth it. I got bought, like, so many drinks.”

“Did you take them all?”

“Who’d you take me for?” 

“Well, welcome to adulthood, kiddo,” she says, “Don’t throw up on my shit, okay?” and kisses the top of his head before walking back through the apartment and out. 

“I love you too,” he shouts, and listens for her laugh. 

 

**2013**

 

“I was thinking maybe,” Keith’s chem partner is saying, halfway through cleaning the desks after. “I was thinking - do you like movies, Keith?”

“What?” Keith replies, then: “I guess.”  

“We could go,” she says. When he says nothing in reply and merely looks at her, blinking, she stammers. “I mean - there’s a group of us. If you. There’s a group.” 

“I have practise.” 

“Oh, sorry. Yeah. That’s. Yeah. Never mind!” 

Her smile is too bright, like if the sound a wineglass makes when you lick your finger and run it around the rim became lips and teeth: a straining wishbone of a smile. Keith silently takes their textbooks to the front of the class. By the time he gets back, she’s gone. He watches the pocket-square of her shirt dress move across the car park from the window, and wonders awkwardly if he should apologise. For all his report cards and his detention slips, he’s not stupid. He knew what she was asking. He just didn’t know how to answer. No, that’s - there’s always an answer - the answer sticks to the roof of his mouth. 

The answer is: there are scouts at his next meet. The answer is: he’s got Nationals in five months, the Olympics are in three years, he has a career with an expiry date. The answer is: in a fortnight, he’s going to stop coming to school anyway. 

So he goes to practise instead. 

“You know I’m gay, right?” he asks his coach in between catching his breath. He wipes his face with the back of his hand whilst his coach looks at Keith. Keith looks back and takes another drink of water, waiting. 

“Do I know - I know you royally fucked that landing,” his coach answers. “If you break something ‘cause you can’t be bothered to listen to me, Kogane, don’t come crying to me.”

“Cool,” Keith says, “Don’t cry. Got it,” and gets back up. 

 

**2012**

 

Lance’s family sits in the shade of the house, watching the flare of colours and music onscreen. It’s evening in London, and the stadium is on fire: with voices, with torches, with light. Lance, sat at the front and entranced, barely notices anything for some time - until he feels the shiver of his popsicle melting and slicking along his arm, until he hears his sister laugh and go, “Look at him. Obsessed.”

Licking the worst of it from his arm, he flips her off at the same time. 

“Swear jar, Lance,” his mother says, without her usual heat. “You do remember to do that later, okay?”

“I didn’t even say anything!” Lance protests. 

She smiles. 

“You didn’t have to.” 

Lance is fifteen and gangly with it. He moves to Havana next month to live with Tahlia, who perches on the arm of the sofa and barely looks up from her Twitter. Lance turns to her on the commercial break, whilst his father stretches his arms above his head and his mother goes to grab another beer from the fridge. The air conditioning hums. It doesn’t cancel out the noise in his chest. 

“You’re missing it,” he says to her. He can’t explain the ache he’s feeling, watching fire climb in a country he’s never been to: the pull of it, the yearning, a yellow brick road like one of his childhood books. He can almost taste the light on his tongue.  

“I’ll watch when you’re there,” she promises. He’ll take what he can get, so he nods. 

He’ll take what he can get and then some, so he says, “The next one.” 

“Sure,” Alex says, spitting a watermelon seed at him. “You and all the other swimmers in Cuba.”

It’s not the first time someone’s said that. This time around, only two swimmers made it past the qualifications and onto the team. It's not the first time. It should sting less. 

“Alex,” Lance’s father warns. Alex shrugs defensively. 

“It’s true!” he tries, before looking at Lance’s face. He’s not sure what he’s doing, busy swallowing down whatever he’s feeling. He sees something in Alex’s eyes that’s a bit like guilt, before Alex hunches over and says, “Ugh, fine. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Lance mimics, and Alex throws a cushion at him, and then the commercials are over. On the screen, the national team are smiling.  This is the last Olympics he will ever watch here in Varadero. 

His heart beats with it: _Rio, Rio, Rio -_

 

**2015**

 

“You can do this,” Keith’s coach tells him at seventeen, hand on his shoulder and nerves in his eyes. Keith looks down at the chalk against his hands, stark and messy against the black of the gloves. He adjusts one of the straps again. Flexes his hand. Nods. 

“Sure,” he replies. He sort of agrees, in that he physically can: he’s landed every rotation in practice, over and over, until gravity’s claim began to waver, until he all he saw when he slept was the blur of the room as, even with eyes closed, he went into the next turn.  He sort of agrees, in that he’s burnt this routine into his very bones. He sort of agrees, in that he’s worked for it, in that he wants it, in a way that’s gone outside of him somehow, colouring everything as the spilt dye of his own ambition bleeds outwards. It’s like chalk; it’s gotten into everything he touches. 

He sort of agrees, but it still might not be enough. That’s how this goes. Sixteen months of training for the next six minutes. He’s not the only kid told he could make it this morning. He just has to be the kid that actually does. 

His name is called. Kogane. Your number’s up, Kogane. His coach wavers again. It’s difficult to know what to say, Keith thinks, especially to a boy like him. He saves them both the trouble. 

“I’m fine,” he says. Keith’s legs are shaking. He takes one step, then another. Run, don’t walk. Run, don’t walk. Run, don’t - 

 

**2016**

 

“Nice to meet you,” Lance says, because nobody’s gonna say his mama didn’t teach him manners. “You like the Eighties?” he adds, because why break the habit of a lifetime? In his eyeline, Hunk gives him a long and eloquent look that Lance just as eloquently ignores. 

Keith Kogane (US National Team, slated for a medal at his first Olympics) raises his eyebrows. 

“Wow,” is all he says. He folds his arms, acting like he isn’t having to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. He’s having to tilt his head back. Lance stretches his arms behind his head, just to watch Kogane frown some more. He gets another look from Hunk for the trouble. 

“Thanks,” Lance replies. “I try my best.” 

Kogane blinks slowly at him. Lance resists the urge to look over his own shoulder. 

“Are you always like this?” Kogane asks finally, and Hunk makes a noise that sounds like a loud and aborted laugh. Lance ignores the betrayal of that in favour of reminding himself he’s got two years and a world record on the boy in front of him. 

“Are you always like this?” Lance counters, echoing, and the corners of Kogane’s mouth hook up suddenly. It does something to his eyes. 

“Guys,” Pidge sounds irritated, appearing in the doorway briefly, tapping one foot, “Come on. Look outside. There’s so much going on, and you’re all just stood here. You’re wasting time.” 

“You’re right,” Lance says, “I guess you’re right,” and Kogane follows him out of the door and down the stairs. 

  
  



End file.
